Honoring Biscuit: A POWA Ceremony for Biscuit

This past weekend, on August 25, 2013, the Kadampa Meditation Center of Maryland (“the Center”), had a POWA Ceremony for Biscuit, which Doug and I attended.  (I have participated in meditation classes and retreats with the Center).  The Buddhist nuns and monks at the Center followed Biscuit’s story, and they were touched by Biscuit’s story as the Buddhist love and honor all living beings  — the Buddhists believe animals and humans are equal.

This POWA Ceremony is the practice of transference of consciousness of the deceased.  The Buddhist believe that through doing a POWA Ceremony with faith, compassion, and concentration we can transfer the consciousness of those recently deceased to a higher rebirth or to the Pure Land of a Buddha.  If living beings have the opportunity to take rebirth in a Buddha’s Pure Land they will attain permanent liberation from suffering and experience pure and everlasting happiness.  Prayers were made to Buddha Vajrasattva on behalf of Biscuit, shown below.

The POWA Ceremony was very nice, and it consisted of prayers to help Biscuit transition into his next life.  In addition to bringing photographs of Biscuit, we also brought offerings to this Ceremony — flowers, cookies, and a Chick-Fil-A ornament to represent Biscuit’s favorite vanilla soft-serve ice cream!  The Buddhist believe that rebirths take place approximately forty-nine days after death.  As it happened to be, August 25, 2013, was exactly forty-nine days after Biscuit passed away.  We hope that Biscuit is having a grand time running and playing in a body free of sickness and pain; and we are hopeful that he is watching over us each day and we hope that he will appear to us as emanations.  We know that Biscuit will send us the “right” sheltie friend.

A few photographs are shown below of this special POWA Ceremony in honor of our little Biscuit, whom we miss dearly.  We would like to thank Kelsang Kalden for helping to organize this special Ceremony for Biscuit; and we also would like to thank Gen Kelsang Chogden for performing this POWA Ceremony for Biscuit.